mblm fltr:education
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Education Powers Up! Did you know that online education could reach 14 million students in 2014? Find out how students in Africa are learning math via SMS, why first graders in Estonia are learning to code, and who is paying U.S. students to drop out of Ivy League schools. Designed to filter the social media conversation, FLTR focuses on one topic during one moment of time. This month we look at education, specifically how technology fuels access and is fundamentally redefining the way education is being created, delivered and paid for.TRANSCRIPT
EDUCATION
FLTR EDUCATION | 2
“ EDUCATION IS THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON WHICH YOU CAN USE TO CHANGE THE WORLD.”
— NELSON MANDELA
technology-fueled accessEDUCATION
Education is a fundamental and
transformative power that can help
people and nations overcome their
socioeconomic status. Globally,
technology is fueling new ways to
bring this power to more people in
more places and is fundamentally
redefining the way education is
being created, delivered and paid for.
FLTR EDUCATION | 3
FLTREDUCATION
Online education could reach 14 million students in 2014. 1
FLTR is designed to cut through the noise of social media to focus on one topic during one moment of time. This month, we look at education, specifically how technology fuels access to:
INNOvATIvE TOOLS
NEw FINANCING
TxT-bASED PROGRAMS
PAPERLESS CLASSES
FLTR EDUCATION | 4
SoFi, a lending solution piloted by students at Stanford’s Graduate School
of Business, is using the power of social communities to transform
student loans. SoFi (short for Social Finance) connects students and
alumni through a dedicated lending pool, offering students a lower loan
rate than their private or federal options and alumni a double bottom-line
return custom built around their alma mater. 5
The Thiels Fellowship, the brainchild of Peter A. Thiel, co-founder of PayPal
and early investor in Facebook, is luring a handful of students away from the
likes of Princeton, Harvard and M.I.T., hoping to find the next big technology
innovation. His offer is this: $50,000 a year for two years, few questions
asked. Just no college. The first Thiel fellows are now in their second year of
the program. Twenty new ones were selected this summer. 6
NEw FINANCING
INFLATION
U.S. COLLEGE COSTS ARE
RISING AT 2-3x INFLATION 3
INCREASE
COLLEGE COSTS ROSE 15%
IN TWO YEARS, FASTER THAN
THE COST OF HEALTHCARE 4
$1 TRILLION
U.S. ExPECTED STUDENT
LOAN DEBT IN 2012 2
A BETTER LOAN DROppINg OuT pAyS
FLTR EDUCATION | 5
TxT-bASED PROGRAMS
Worldreader, a program that provides school children with access to digital
books through donated Kindle e-readers, recently began publishing via a
mobile-phone-based e-reader. The Worldreader app and its library of stories
is already on 3.9 million handsets, with active readers in Nigeria, Ethiopia
and Ghana. 8
E-READER
Nokia Life, an SMS-based information service with more than 70 million
subscribers in Nigeria and other countries, delivers preparation tips for
middle and high school exams, health education aimed at families and
English language learning. 10
LIFE LESSONS
Mxit is Africa’s largest homegrown mobile social network. With more than 50
million users, the South Africa-founded service allows its mostly young users
to stay in touch by text chatting. Dr Math on Mxit has connected 30,000
children with math tutors for live chat sessions via SMS. 9
2+2=TxT
For millions of Africans, much of their daily reading
and writing happens on mobile phones in the form
of SMS and instant message chats. Providers
are responding, transforming the way traditional
education is delivered and the way people learn. 7
2NDLARGESTMObILE MARKET
62 OF THE TOP
SCHOOLS IN THE WORLD
100LEARNING PROGRAMS
HAVE PAPERLESS
U.S. KOREA
TO
FLTR EDUCATION | 6
One Laptop per Child, the nonprofit dedicated
to empowering the world’s poorest children,
has released its tablet — currently being sold
in bulk into education systems. Optimized for
learning in any environment, it can be charged
with a hand crank or through its solar-powered
rubberized lid, and though indoors the display
looks like any other screen, outside it can be
used as a reflective e-ink type display and the
resolution jumps accordingly. 11
The UAE’s Higher Colleges of Technology will
become the first school in the region to roll
out iPad-only lessons. The initiative, known as
iPadagogy, is a bid to create a wholly paperless
educational environment and eliminate the use
of paper and pens on campuses. The move
toward iPad education is being rolled out in
colleges around the world — from the U.S. to
Korea, 62 of the top 100 schools are engaged in
similar initiatives. 12
PAPERLESS CLASSES
Avenues, a new, nearly $40,000-a-year
nursery-through-college-prep school in
Manhattan, is taking paperless to the next
level: students and faculty will be equipped
with both iPads and MacBook Air laptops;
classes, designed in iBooks Author, will be
shared via a dedicated channel on iTunes
U; and on campus, students will be able to
share their work via interactive displays and
multimedia walls. 13
ONE TABLET pER ChILD IpADAgOgy ELITE ImmERSION
62 OF THE TOP
SCHOOLS IN THE WORLD
100LEARNING PROGRAMS
HAVE PAPERLESS
U.S. KOREA
TO
FLTR EDUCATION | 7
A school in Amsterdam is using Facebook
Timeline to teach history. By focusing not only
on the content through posts and various
media, but also on the chronology of events,
students are able to experience a larger
understanding of cultural and social themes. 14
Through a pilot program in Estonia, students
are being taught web and mobile app
development as early as first grade. Mozilla has
been sponsoring events such as “Hack Jams”
and has developed Hackasaurus, a collection of
tools that let kids “remix” elements of a site. 15
Inspired by the success of Spotify, education
technology startup BenchPrep has
transformed into a subscription-based service.
Now, for $30 a month, you can access test prep
(GRE, LSAT, SAT, etc.) and a variety of courses
on your laptop, smartphone or tablet device. 16
INNOvATIvE TOOLS
EmBRACINg TImELINE CODE LITERACy SpOTIFy FOR EDuCATION
<!---->
62 OF THE TOP
SCHOOLS IN THE WORLD
100LEARNING PROGRAMS
HAVE PAPERLESS
U.S. KOREA
TO
A school in Amsterdam is using Facebook’s
timeline to teach history. By not only focusing
on the content through posts and various
media, but also the chronology of events,
students are able to experience a larger
understanding of cultural and social themes.
Through a pilot program in Estonia, students
are being taught development as early as first
grade. Mozilla has been moving code literacy
forward, sponsoring events such as “Hack
Jams” and devloping Hackasaurus, a collection
of tools that let kids “remix” elements of a site.
Inspired by the success of Spotify, education
technology startup, BenchPrep, has
transformed into a subscription-based service.
Now, for $30 a month, you can access test prep
(GRE, LSAT, SAT, etc.) and a variety of courses
on your laptop, smartphone or tablet device.
EmBRACINg TImELINE CODE LITERACy SpOTIFy FOR EDuCATION
<!---->
Special thanks to the entire team at MBLM
for their contributions, observations,
insights and input — their FLTR work on
education made this report possible.
Check out other issues of FLTR:
ExECuTIVE EDITORS
Mario Natarelli
EDITORIAL AND DESIgN TEAm
Tara Mastrelli
Daniel Irizarry
Melissa Kalish
FLTR EDUCATION | 8
ACKNOwLEDGMENTS & SOURCES
FLTR EDuCATION1. Orgill, J., and D. Hervey, “How Online Innovators are Disrupting Education,” 4, Nov. 2011. Web: 16 Oct. 2012. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/how_online_ innovators_are_disr.html
NEW FINANCINg2. “Student Loan Debt Clock,” FinAid.org. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://www.finaid.org/loans/studentloandebtclock.phtml
3. “How BLS Measures Price Change for College Tuition and Fees in the Consumer Price Index,” Bureau of Labor Statistics. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpifacct.htm
4. “How in the World Did College Costs Rise 15% in Only 2 Years?” The Atlantic, 13 Jun. 2012. Web: 16 Oct. 2012. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/ archive/2012/06/how-in-the-world-did-college-costs-rise-15-in-only-2- years/258463/
5. Venture Beat, “Investors make $77M bet that a startup can solve the student debt crisis,” 11 Sept. 2012. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/11/sofi/
6. The New York Times, “Forgoing College to Pursue Dreams,” 15 Sept. 2012. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/business/the- thiel-fellows-forgoing-college-to-pursue-dreams.html?_r=3&hp&
TxT-BASED7. GSMA, “Africa Now the World’s Second Largest Mobile Market, Reports GSMA,” 9 Nov. 2011. Press Release: 15 Oct. 2012. http://www.gsma.com/ newsroom/africa-now-the-worlds-second-largest-mobile-market-reports- gsma/
8. BBC, “The Future of Education in Africa is Mobile,” 24 Aug. 2012. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120823-what-africa-can-learn- from-phones/2
9. BBC, “The Future of Education in Africa is Mobile,” 24 Aug. 2012. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120823-what-africa-can-learn- from-phones/2
10. BBC, “The Future of Education in Africa is Mobile,” 24 Aug. 2012. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120823-what-africa-can-learn- from-phones/2
pApERLESS CLASSES11. Wired, “OLPC Tablet Finally Arrives,” 9 Jan. 2012. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http:// www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/01/olpc-tablet-finally-arrives/
12. Arabian Business, “UAE Colleges to Ditch Books for iPads,” 5 Sept. 2012. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://www.arabianbusiness.com/exclusive-uae-colleges-ditch- books-for-ipads-472011.html
13. DeLo, Dirk, “Technology @ The Avenues Campus,” 27 Feb. 2012. Press Release: 16 Oct. 2012. http://www.avenues.org/technology-the-avenues- campus
INNOVATIVE TOOLS14. PSFK, “School Uses Facebook Timeline to Teach History,” 17 Sept. 2012. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://www.psfk.com/2012/09/facebook-timeline-teach- history-schools.html
15. Wired, “Estonia Reprograms First Graders as Web Coders,” 4 Sept. 2012. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/09/estonia- reprograms-first-graders-as-web-coders/
16. Venture Beat, “BenchPrep, ‘Spotify for education’, offers classes and test prep for $30 a month,” 18 Sept. 2012. Web: 15 Oct. 2012. http://venturebeat. com/2012/09/18/benchprep/
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